
Today in Focus Will we ever read books again?
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Feb 23, 2026 Katherine Rundell, author and Oxford scholar of English and children’s books, talks about the global fall in reading and why it matters. She describes tools she used to reclaim focus and how students and children are affected. She explores COVID, phones and social media as causes, the value of fiction for empathy, and practical fixes like stronger libraries and age protections online.
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Physical Tools To Force Focus
- Katherine Rundell shows physical tools she uses to stop phone use and read, including a tappable 'brick' and a lockbox timer.
- She turns off her home internet and sometimes locks the router away to force sustained reading and writing sessions.
Students' Deep Reading Has Fallen
- Katherine Rundell reports that even Oxford and Harvard students now struggle to read full novels quickly compared with previous generations.
- She says sustained deep reading used to be common among brilliant students but now is the exception, not the rule.
Reading Decline Undermines Critical Thinking
- Reported childhood reading enjoyment has fallen sharply and daily out-of-school reading halved in 20 years, collapsing previous socio-economic gaps.
- Rundell argues this creates a generation lacking the nuanced reading skills needed to spot misinformation and think deeply.















